Old River, New Trees

In an early post, I wrote of the river I knew when I was a small child, the Quinnipiac as it passed through the village of Plantsville, Connecticut.  I recalled it seemed very small and messy, even ugly.

Yesterday, we passed through the Quinnipiac watershed on our way to the Hudson Valley.  I got out of the car in Plantsville.  I found the very modest bridge from where I used to look down on the oily, tire-strewn stream in the 1950s.

No larger than it used to be, still hemmed by narrow and human-made banks, the river seemed clear.  A plastic cup trapped in a little sand bar and a mop handle stuck along the bottom lent an accent of debris within a renewed, clean flow.

We passed the house I lived in from birth to age 11.  Two forty-foot maples grow in front of the small white house next to a Carpenter Gothic church, uphill from the river.  They were not planted yet when our family moved this very week 56 years ago.  Over those decades, some of the water that descended on that stretch of the Quinnipiac valley never made it to the river.  Those maples' roots drew the water up and up to create, in their leafless winter state, a representation in branches of the shape of a river's place in the landscape, that dendritic look shared by trees and watersheds.

From the Ottauquechee to the Hudson

Sunset fell around 4 p.m. today on the Hudson River, north of West Point.  I took this picture, with Storm King Mountain looming over the darkening river from a point in Cold Spring, N.Y.  Elizabeth and I traveled down the Connecticut River Valley today, turning southwest through the watersheds of the Quinnipiac and Housatonic Rivers, and then into that of the Hudson.

Rumor has it that propane tanks swept into the Ottauquechee by Tropical Storm Irene were found up the Hudson River, whose tidal zone reaches past Storm King Mountain and still can be measured in Albany.

Twin Rivers

 

 

Yesterday's pulse of high water has come and gone.  After morning flurries, the mid-afternoon brought clearing skies.  A new freezing cycle will begin this week, with temperatures predicted in the single digits at night. 

 

We drove today down the Connecticut River valley, crossing a bridge over the Black River along the way.  Where the Great River Rises, the atlas of the upper Connecticut River system, twins the Black and Ottauquechee as one watershed unit.  Almost the same length, about 40 miles, they roughly parallel each other in their respective courses from Plymouth and Killington to the greater river. 

 

As the Ottauquechee made Woodstock, so the Black made Springfield.

 

 

 

The Black River and Springfield, Vermont around 1910

 

 

Higher Water

The river rose this morning between 7 a.m. when I walked the dog and about noon when I took this picture, the result of nighttime rain and more snow melt.  Leaf fragments, sticks, branches and logs rushed under the bridge in the turgid brown. Around eight, Elizabeth had driven by Gulf Stream, which feeds Barnard Brook and then the Ottauquechee, and witnessed unusual force and volume.  Gulf Stream carved some of the valley Rt. 12 follows north from Woodstock.  Gulf Stream funnels waters from brooks coming out of the Prosper Valley, an area "defined by the ridgelines running through Barnard, Bridgewater, Pomfret and Woodstock." A University of Vermont website names this valley a watershed all its own.  The top of Mt. Peg offers a great view of the Prosper Valley. Tropical Storm Irene wiped out a bridge on Gulf Stream not far from its connection to Barnard Brook.

Today's higher waters hint at what the river has done before, and will do again.

Rivers Everlasting

On the third day of Christmas, I recall a recent conversation with a priest colleague about the way rivers connect high places with low.  She exclaimed, "That's Christological! They mediate between heaven and earth."

In my reflections, the divinity imputed to rivers keeps emerging.  My daughter in London gave me a Peter Ackroyd book titled Thames:  Sacred River.  The volume I have been reading about the differing roots of cultural growth between the New and Old Worlds makes much of the sacredness of the Ganges of India.  Author Peter Watson noted some believe it to be a daughter of the king of the mountains.

What about a river gives rise to thoughts of the divine?  Rivers, for the most part, outlive us.  They flow before we are born and keep flowing after we die.  They transcend our lifespans and the lifespans of every generation of identifiable humanity.  Although not as eternal seeming as the seas, they have lives of such unimaginable antiquity that they might as well be immortal.

The Vermont State Park's website on Quechee Gorge Geology (http://www.vtstateparks.com/pdfs/quecheegeo.pdf) shows a tantalizing sketch of the path of the pre-glacial parent of our Ottauquechee, flowing not far from the current stream, going strong 130,000 years ago. 

You cannot step in to the same river twice, and yet the same river can flow for nearly forever.

Light on the River

The high Christmas waters crested before this morning, leaving behind a sharp line where the river swept through the snow along the banks.  As I stood on the bridge this morning, it took only a few minutes to see the level drop further, shown by inches more of wet rock standing out of the water.

The sun shown in fits and starts as I took pictures.  After three grey days, I longed for stronger light.  Finally, on the fourth try, after twice starting home and returning when the sun spread wider, this shot emerged. 

My dear family presented me with three river books yesterday.  More light on the Ottauquechee!

Christmas Rising

Throughout the watershed this Christmas day, the rain and above average temperatures melted snow cover, sending innumerable freshets down gullies and divides, into creeks and brooks, carrying earth, leaf debris and matter unrecognizable, if no less real, into the Ottauquechee.  Swirling under the bridge these additions to the stream raise and color the waters, opaque today.  We expect more rain tonight, Yuletide abundance of another sort.